Dag Hammarskjöld

Dag Hammarskjöld (1905-1961), Swedish statesman and United Nations official, who served as UN secretary-general for more than eight years.

Hammarskjöld was born in Jönköping on July 29, 1905, and educated at the universities of Uppsala and Stockholm. He served as under-secretary of the department of finance of the Swedish government and as a member of the economic advisory board from 1936 to 1946, when he entered the diplomatic service as finance specialist in the foreign office. He participated (1947) in the organizing conference of the European Recovery Programme and was (1948-1949) vice-chairman of the executive committee of the Organization for European Economic Cooperation. Named Swedish deputy foreign minister and Cabinet minister without portfolio in 1951, Hammarskjöld was a member and chief of the Swedish delegation to the UN in 1952 and early 1953. On April 7, 1953, he was elected secretary-general of the UN; he served in that post until his death in a plane crash in Africa in September 1961, while on a mission concerning a separatist movement in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

Hammarskjöld developed the powers and scope of his office in many ways without formal amendment of the provisions of the UN Charter relating to his official functions. As a UN emissary he travelled widely on missions of great political delicacy and significance, and his frequent successes, both as mediator and as negotiator, won him acclaim as a statesman. He was posthumously awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1961.